One of the
world's oldest museums, the British Museum is vast and its collections, only a
fraction of which can be on public display at any time, comprise millions of
objects.
The
V&A houses one of the world's greatest collections of decorative arts, in
such varied fields as ceramics, sculpture, portrait miniatures and photography.
Alfred Waterhouse building houses a collection
that contains some 70 million plant, animal, fossil, rock and mineral
specimens.
The Science Museum features seven floors of educational and entertaining exhibits, including the Apollo 10 command module and a flight simulator
Founded in
1824 to display a collection of just 36 paintings, today the National Gallery
is home to more than 2,000 works. There are masterpieces from virtually every
European school of art.
Tate Modern
This original powerhouse of modern art is awe-inspiring even
before you enter, thanks to its industrial architecture. Inside, the turbine
hall is used to jaw-dropping effect as the home of large-scale, temporary
installations.
On this
Greenwich Park site you'll find the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House
and the Royal Observatory, founded in 1675 by Charles II.
Opened in 1989 (following its original
incarnation as the Boilerhouse established in the V&A by Terence Conran),
the Design Museum by Tower Bridge encompasses modern and contemporary
industrial and fashion design, graphics, architecture and multimedia.
Among the
vehicles on display at the London Transport Museum is the first underground
electric train, which had no windows because there was nothing to see
underground.
Located in
the stately 1815 building that once housed the Bethlem Royal Hospital for the
insane (aka Bedlam), IWM London holds an important collection of twentieth-century
art, much of it officially commissioned during WWI and WWII, examples of the
machinery of war, official communications, manuscripts of war literature and
other, more personal artefacts from the conflicts of the twentieth century.
-Elena Gutierrez
Pictures and Content
from TIME OUT LONDON MAGAZINE
